Processed bovine cartilage: an improved biosynthetic implant for contour defects.

Irradiated human cartilage has been found to be a superior implant material for correction of contour defects; however, availability problems have prevented this material from gaining wide acceptance. Implantation of processed irradiated bovine cartilage in primates and rabbits, as described here, provides strong evidence that this material performs like irradiated allograft cartilage antigenically and has certain cosmetic advantages over allograft cartilage. Our studies in primates have shown that there is no systemically measurable antibody-antigen reaction, either cellular or noncellular, to irradiated processed bovine cartilage. Neither primary nor second-set provocative implantations produced any measurable rejection. In rabbits, composite grafts of two pieces of irradiated bovine cartilage adjacent to each other were also well tolerated, with no measurable absorption and with capsule formation typical of a foreign body reaction to an inert object.